The terrible tears have all been wept and only a few dark brown cello notes hang in the afternoon air, where, once, night’s sullen heart reverberated. You were always an empty street, lit with pale yellow lamps, never a fellow traveler. I asked you to take my hand and walk me home and you answered with bones and the silence of bones, the carcass of autumn, already stiffening into winter. ...

Holes, holes in everything, even bones, even minds become soiled doilies, and the flightless wings of blighted memory are blood-rusted stubs, not bridal lace. Long ago, I must have been a sorrowful, leathery ape of a child, clambering in the moss-grown ruins of my mother’s madness. On the last day that I had a mind, I remembered walking between hot, copper columns of sunlight, meeting my father’s bones and my brother’s ashes and answering their questions about my charred, failed life. On the last day that I had a body, a crone with black smoke wings instead of arms left a pearl-colored child, who was as lovely, silent and stupid as a fish, in a bundle on my front porch. I knelt and cradled her against my stammering heart, and I rocked the death baby rocked the death baby....

I want some storm before the calm, dancing, wind-battered on top of an avalanche, embraced by thunder every time lightening unzips the darkness. My house was my body and it was filled with children. Now the rooms are washed shapeless by rain and failure. As ashes fall and water rises, all of the dolls are broken or lost, all of the babies are small and smaller bones. Shame is never a single voice, but a shrouded chorus of small, pale faces, whispering to me from inside a smeared mirror: “What you called healing, called mother-wisdom was dancing with your own reflection. What you called love, was pride.” Time is not smooth and even everywhere; there are places where it thickens and slows. I will lie down there, in that tale, in that forest, as tiny cold hands bloom from the pestilent soil around me. I will endure the agony of their terrible forgiveness. Even when they are pressed into my mouth, I will not swallow the healing leaves of death or protect my face with earth when stars pick at my eyes with their accusing bone fingers from a billion miles...

This piece has three “rooms”, each expressing a different possible outcome for the tale. In the “Hunter and the Wolf”, viewers may place an iPhone inside the tv set, click on a YouTube video and see what the Hunter and Wolf are watching. Red Riding Hood and the Wolf Once I saw what was coming, why did I do nothing to stop it, to save my daughter? Her grass stained cape, her wine breath should have been evidence enough. Why did I tell myself that the cake I saw, crushed beside the path, belonged to a careless woodcutter’s lunch? Her lies were so young and so clumsy: “Grandma is getting worse, She won’t remember my visits five minutes after I leave.” Now my only daughter is truly gone. Fled to the wolf’s lair? To a distant village? All night the forest branches creak and accuse outside the window of my cottage. Why did I never tell her that my own hood was moss colored velvet, that her father was a flame-red fox? Grandma and the Hunter Alarmed by the animal sounds from inside, Red Riding Hood and her Wolf burst into my cottage. The Hunter and I laughed at the little O’s made by their mouths and eyes. My granddaughter slammed the door, but no matter. I could never have explained to her how I have waited a lifetime to be caught by the warm, certain hands of this grizzled Hunter. Run and then lie down in the wild, cold woods in the snow dazzled noon with your Wolf, my dear girl. I will stay here, bedded with my Hunter, trapped in breathless ecstasy,...

Once upon a time, there was a mother whose heart had grown on the outside of her body. Every little breeze of her children’s joy made it tremble and their smallest woes caused it to twist and thud with pain. All day long her arms were filled with children, like sweet bouquets. She built them a house entirely out of flowers and every single morning, she made cake. Many years of mornings and small birds passed. At last, she had only the memory of children’s voices, like bright scattered candies, and finally, enormous, mindless Death came and ate her up. Her children waved goodbye as the flower house fell down, but most of them remembered it for quite a long...